Throughout the world many homes include smooth flooring surfaces such as linoleum, vinyl, wood and ceramic tile and less carpeting and soft floor coverings. As such, there is an increased requirement for improved methods of cleaning such surfaces. Many steam cleaning appliances have been designed for floor cleaning but their shortcomings in terms of size, weight, reliability and cleaning performance have limited their use.
One problem associated with current steam mops is that the steam alone may be insufficient to provide viable disinfection as the cleaning pad temperature adjacent to the surface being cleaned, and the surface being cleaned do not exceed 85° C. and that such temperatures are only maintained for short periods of time. Furthermore, many stains on floor consist at least partially of organic materials which are therefore not readily dissolved or broken down by water and/or steam. There remains a need for a floor cleaning appliance which can effectively clean and disinfect. A further problem with the use of current steam mops is that many back and forth strokes are required to remove many types of stains.
A further problem with current steam mops is that the rate of steam delivery is fixed while different flooring surfaces and different usage patterns such as the number of cleaning strokes per minute would change the amount of steam and/or cleaning chemicals required to create optimal cleaning.